City may revise council attendance

Policy allows members to skip some regular meetings

Nov. 7, 2012

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What: Charter Revision Commission working session When: 3:30 p.m. today Where: Carnegie Town Hall The commission, which serves as an advisory board to review the city’s Home Rule Charter and can bring proposed changes to public vote, will review the articles and sections on the City Council, the mayor, departments, offices and agencies, and on financial procedures as time permits. Public input will be taken.

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How often City Council members make it to meetings might get a closer look next year.

Attendance is one of the topics being studied by the Charter Revision Commission, which will meet today as part of a series of working sessions to review the city’s Home Rule Charter.

The charter requires at least one City Council meeting a month and states that councilors must attend 50 percent of regular meetings — which are the first meeting of the month. But the council has three meetings a month, and some members of the Charter Revision Commission want to promote good attendance.

Commissioner Robert Thimjon said during a working session last month that since the council meets three times a month, it’s not just the first meeting that counts.

But Commissioner De Knudson, a former city councilor, said missing meetings has not been an issue in the past.

“If I were that irresponsible as a city councilor, great pressure would be placed on me by my colleagues,” she said. “If something is not broken, why do we need to mess with it?”

Thimjon said sometimes elected officials do not respond to peers, and it might be worthwhile to alter the charter to reflect the fact the council holds three meetings each month.

“There’s no significant difference in the agenda, so why is the first meeting the only one we look at?” he said.

City Councilor Sue Aguilar said during public input that councilors have good attendance overall, and missed meetings usually are business or health-related.

“The only thing I ask you to take into consideration is that this council has scheduled meetings every Tuesday of the month, and this is a part-time council,” she said. “We don’t get vacation, so some of these things have to be taken into consideration.”

The commission is set up as an advisory board to field suggested revisions to the charter, which essentially serves as a constitution to establish functions of the City Council, mayor and other government agencies. Any changes it recommends must be approved by a public vote.

Further discussion and public input will take place next year, and the commission could opt to bring any proposals to public vote. The soonest a vote would occur is 2014, City Attorney Dave Pfeifle said.

He said the council also can set its own additional attendance policies.

Pfeifle said a formal proposal is in the works for a change to the charter’s reference to specific day of the week for council meetings, to make it more flexible.

That change also would need to be approved by voters if commissioners decide to move it forward.